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Mission Impossible

TECHKNOWLEDGE Seven ways to leverage your infrastructure against spyware When in doubt, reimage In many university environments, it's common practice to reimage systems every quarter, deleting the old OS (and any resident spyware and malicious code) and installing a newly upgraded and patched OS. Some government agencies and financial institutions have taken this practice to the extreme by reimaging their desktops every night. Users are told to store all permanent data on a network file share instead of the local system. That way, user machines act like network terminals—portals by which users can access and edit files stored on protected network servers without storing anything locally. It's the network-centric computing model reborn, this time to fight spyware and malicious code. Initially, users in these organizations complained that their custom desktop backgrounds and screen savers disappeared every night. But, within a couple of weeks, they accepted the change and appreciated the increased reliability of their nightly ...